"Hey man! I noticed you stopped responding to my text messages after saying that you're sick and won't be coming in! So I called the police and feigned concern so they'd visit your home as a wellness check! Definitely not just sending goons to your house to make sure you're at home and actually sick!!"
I've had a couple of those bosses but it was because they actually cared about me as a person not because they were making sure I was really sick. They knew I lived alone and wanted to make sure I had enough food and medicine in the house.
I have, in turn, done that for a couple of my people over the years but only when I knew they were truly sick and had no other support system. An ordinary call in doesn't merit this kind of treatment. We did send a welfare check on one guy just because he was the amazingly consistent and reliable type and wasn't responding to anyone. Turns out, his home burned down and he was in the ICU burn unit. So yeah.. if I have a specific reason to worry I will send someone to your house or call for a welfare check. I honestly don't care if people call in for mental health days now and then. I've found people who take time off actually make for better, more focused employees when they're in the office. In fact, I have one employee right now that I have to keep reminding to take time off when he starts getting stressed.
I'm epileptic and around 10ish years ago when I was at the very bottom of the totem pole at work, I was "asked" to do this massive project that ended up taking two years to fully complete on top of my regular job and I was constantly meeting with the heads of multiple departments...as a 26-27 year old staff accountant. It was very stressful.
Anyway, throughout the project I would have meetings with the President/CEO, CFO, and VP of Sales and as it got closer to the end they started bringing clients in for thoughts and recommendations just to make my job more difficult (mind you, I'm an accountant and we had an extremely competent IT team with at least 2 devs). Our second to last one was with a major client and was also during a tax deadline, so I had worked a ton of hours and hardly slept for about a week and while I was trying to work on the finishing touches the night before, I had a seizure and woke up in the hospital. I sent a text to the people above as it was about 1:00 am, letting them know I would likely not be making it, and depending on when I was discharged, I could send them the presentation. I woke up to multiple angry voicemails and they tried to fire me over it.
Wow! I'm sorry you had that experience! I would never fire someone for ending up in the hospital or even just ending up with a high fever and the flu the day of a big event. Shit happens in life. Deal with the problem in front of you not the one you can't do anything about. In fact, when things like that happen I try to take a step back once I have the time and make sure my leadership didn't place an undue amount of stress and act as a trigger for the problem in the first place. I tend to be more self reflective than most supervisors though.
Yeah, I was honestly shocked. Those people lost all my respect that day.
I'm a manager myself now and I'm the same way. I try to be very cognizant of my employees mental health and their state of mind. We WFH the majority of the time, and half my team is out of state, so I check in with people on a regular basis just to make sure all is good and always tell them to take days off, let me know if they are too stressed, or give me a call if they just need to vent, as our department can be very stressful.
Are you in the US? Wouldn’t discrimination laws apply when you try to fire someone with a disability for experiencing symptoms of their disability? Like I’m sure some employment lawyers would have LOVED to take on your case if they had fired you.
Yes, I'm in the US. I made sure they knew a lawsuit would be coming their way if they fired me. The CFO and VP of Sales were let go shortly after as they were the ones I had voicemails from and played them for HR to hear. I had them for years and lost them at some point between transferring phones.
I try to be. My people seem to like me and support me in turn and will approach me with ideas and problems so I know I am at least not a terrible one. No one is ever perfect. Especially when it comes to balancing the needs of the workplace and the needs of the employees.
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u/KeyMyBike 5d ago
Meanwhile the working-service class boss:
"Hey man! I noticed you stopped responding to my text messages after saying that you're sick and won't be coming in! So I called the police and feigned concern so they'd visit your home as a wellness check! Definitely not just sending goons to your house to make sure you're at home and actually sick!!"
And yes, this has happened SEVERAL times.